Butt Plugs

I make butt plugs.  Adorn your assholes people!  Oh just kidding.  How would I have learned to forge steel and make glass.  I lack ambition, I guess.  No.  See that little sign in the back?  Well, it's not really that impressive, but a few people have told me they like it.  AND, because I used cotton letterpress paper, no erasing!  So, like, seriously, free-hand-one-try.  Right.  I have penmanship!  BUTT, there are no jobs for a hand-lettering butt plug sign artist.  Locals, buy your butt plugs at Oh My!  And buy gifts!

SWEET BLOODY LOVE

Ah yeah.  Ima gonna see how it looks pasting a whole shortish story here.  I've been doing stuff, but not really post worthy stuff.  But I did write this little story and submitted it to a local publication.  Who knows.  I don't even know if it's good, or needs to be good to be accepted.  We'll see.  Maybe I put in a zine?   


SWEET BLOODY LOVE


There is something perfectly awkward and natural and sweet and stupid about the first time you find yourself in bed with a boy you love. All that luxurious privacy, comfort and time was almost more than my young heart could bear. I wasn’t sure how far we would go, but I tried to relax and prayed my body would cooperate. I was delirious with a combination of self-consciousness, desire, trust and fear. Perhaps Clayton was feeling the same way. If so, he was hiding it better than I was. With every noise I jumped and asked if it could be his grandmother. Interruptions did not seem to concern him. All his attention was focused on me and my naked body. That single-mindedness is breathtaking and dangerous.

We heard a key enter the lock and the door bounce against the chain. “Clayton? Clayton, are you home? Why is the door chained?” his grandmother asked from the hallway of her apartment complex. Clayton, feigning disorientation, mumbled something about napping and vague fears of home intrusion. I scrambled my clothes on and slid to the floor on the far side of the bed. Clayton threw on his robe and hurried to the living area to unchain the door. He returned, dressed quickly and whispered a plan. She would need to use the bathroom soon enough. I would wait, ready at a moments notice to be slipped out the front door. Alert, I eavesdropped on their conversation. She talked about her church retreat and how happy she was to take an early ride home. Clayton offered to make her tea. I smiled as I heard him turn the water on and off repeatedly, knowing what he was trying to prompt. She chatted away, not a bladder concern in the world.

Clayton’s grandmother gasped, “Clayton! It’s almost 7 o’clock! You’ll be late for CCD! You need to get going!” Clayton complained he wasn’t feeling well, linking it to the mid-day napping and odd chain-locking behavior. She wasn’t hearing it. And that’s when I heard Clayton leave. I was stunned, hurt and amazed. Quickly accepting the fact that I had an hour and a half wait, I surveyed the state of my own bladder and began crafting the story I would tell. That’s when I heard the door to his room open. His grandmother entered, walked straight to the far side of the bed and kicked me as she leaned over to turn on the floor lamp. “Nicole! Does Clayton know you’re here? You are not allowed to be here when no one is home!” Explaining the less damning story I’d concocted, she interrupted and ordered me to wait at the table while she used the bathroom. I contemplated taking off, but decided that would be admitting guilt. I sat down to await my scolding.

Just then Clayton bust through the door covered in blood. Clayton had been going through a John Lennon phase and favored all white clothing. The white of his jacket intensified the fantastic amount and surface area of the blood splatter. He looked confused and hurt to find me sitting at the table. His grandmother returned from the bathroom before I could say a word. The sight of all that blood further flustered her and she busied herself with nose-plugging, head-tilting and cleaning up the mess. She delivered a baffling lecture. I humbly apologized and promised to never stop by un-announced again. I was allowed to leave and walk the hour plus home, alone.

We had to wait until school the next day to talk. He thought I’d been faithless. I’d worried he’d been callous. While I was settling in to wait out an hour and a half on the floor, he had been standing outside the door punching himself in the nose to save me. We shared some beautiful stories, and really, what more could we ask for.

WMME: issue 2 Paul Westerberg +

Issue 2, that's right.  No need to be impressed, like I pulled this shit together in the few weeks since issue 1.  There's a lot of stuff sorta simmering in my low burner of a brain.  Sometimes it takes FOREVER for me to figure things out.  Sometimes I have Jedi like instant understanding.  Anyway, I am pretty fascinated with what happens to capture my attention.  If my brain is stuck on something, I just sort of trust it to help me figure things out eventually. 

So, dreamy Paul Westerberg.  Yes, it was a big big crush.  So seriously, how cool that I met him, right?  That's what this issue is all about.  But I think there's this other thing it's about too.  I wrote about a longing to have people do bold, awesome stuff just for me, but really, that happens all the fucking time.  I am damned lucky.  My friends, they are awesome and then they say and do the most awesome mind-blowing stuff for me.  And then if I hardly know someone but have a thought I wanna know them - I tend to make that happen and it tends to work out well.  And if I'm working at a job where there are not a lot of people into the same things I'm into - I still manage to find the people I would want to find.  And on the shittier side of things, sometimes you have to deal with an idiot or someone you have no respect for, and it can be pretty stressful and annoying, but that shit usually works out beautifully too.  So am I lucky?  or smart?  or a good judge of character?  or have good character and attract the right people?  Or maybe because I like stories, or was an english major, I just know how to tell myself the story I want to hear?  I don't know!  But I'm kinda lovin' all of it. 

MARIA FIGUEROA + L. VU #2 and #3

Ya know, I don't know what I am doing.  Is that true?  Honestly, I can't be sure.  Maybe I know, maybe I don't.  I'm all right with it though.  I guess this is what I think. For some reason I saved a bunch of these bags, probably because I noticed the names and thought about the people making them.  The reason also has something to do with me always collecting free paper and stuff that I notice, that happens to pass through my hands.  And also that my first job involved working in a factory.  There was a stockpile.  Ideas have been bounced around. I always liked writing dialogue.  For some reason yesterday I wrote an interview with Brenda Nieves, from the bag.  And I left it somewhere.  Hhhmm.  I do know that I like:  paper, reusing stuff, doing stuff on found stuff, writing, people, writing dialogue, my markers, leaving stuff, telling stories (other stuff too of course, but this is about this non-thing I made).  Well, there ya go.  Last night I was eating Ellio's pizza, on china (thanks to tk for introducing the using of the china) and listening to records and writing interviews extemporaneously and passing them to my husband.  Then we watched some tv.

BRENDA NIEVES #1

Remember bucks?  Well I do.  This is gonna be kinda like that.  I don't think anyone will ask me for my thoughts or drawings on bag bottoms, so I suspect I will just litter this shit arounds town.  Yup.  It's a new plan.  I expect there will be interspersed making, still and too.  Oh, I guess I don't remember bucks so well after all since in those posts I told you about where I left bucks or who gut um.  All rightey.  I'm gonna think on that.  Plans always changing, gots to keep moving right?  I don't really know.  I'm starting something here and I'll letcha know how it goes.  Or you be the judge. 

#1 BRENDA NIEVES Jul 07 11 EL 40-A B:  an impromptu interview with Brenda Nieves.  It's a little clumsy.  Totally my fault!  People make bags.  I noticed. 

WMME: issue 1 Allowances

Checks it out!  First issue of my Western Mass ME zine.  I feel oddly, exactly the same.  And oddly, that seems exactly right.  It was a process and it did take a while.  I'm glad I did it and have it to document this era.  While making it, I wondered if it would be interesting to anyone, what I would learn, if my drawing would improve, if I will look back on it years from now and love it, laugh at it.  Who knows.  More coming.  Copy done on next one and ideas for at least 4-6 more in mind.  We'll see what happens.  If I may, what I like about this issue is that everyone makes a million decisions every day.  Everything says something about you, but you have no control over other people's interpretation.  So why people sweating image?  For example, it's not cool to eat at Joe's and it's not cool to not eat at Joe's.  You just do or don't.  You could be an asshole, you could be awesome.  Maybe you ate at Joe's every Saturday night with your best friends in the mid 90's and now you eat at the Blue Bonnet Diner every Saturday night with your best friends.  End of the day, they are all your decisions.  Sometimes I'm busy, or lazy or tired or overwhelmed or rushing to work or only have $3.  As long as it makes sense to me, I'm happy.  I'm really mainly focused on trying to impress myself, and my husband, friends, colleagues and family.  And that means I have to leave my comfort zone and do things that challenge me.  And sometimes there's a mother fucking shitload on ya, and nobody knows it and you find your own way to get through it.  And maybe that week you ate slices from Mimmo's 3 times and maybe, on that week, that was some righteous shit because you got done what you had to get done.  Or maybe I was lazy.

Trinkt Echt Kolsch

Cut paper, glued on chipboard and laminated.  This is my Pop's Father's Day postcard.  It's from a Kolsch ad.  That's a beer from Cologne, Germany.  Drinking beer in Germany is full of regional ritual.  I have so many awesome beer drinking in Germany memories:  bier gardens, sharing tables with strangers, small beers and numerous hash marks on coasters, beer vending machines, German cousins trying to get you drunk, German elders teaching you the right way to do it, heavy liter steins and jokes about drinking arms, pils and alt, kolsch, Jever, German toasts, singing in bars, listening to yodeling in a hidden pub, drinking on relative's patios, sitting in the grass along the Mosel, beer on trains.  Man, I'm thirsty.  Me and my Pop are weirdly similar.  It's become more clear as I've gotten older.  And I guess the weird part is really that all the inexplicable things that my father did when I was growing up, now seem like crystal clear unambiguous lessons in what he expected from me.  I might not have been smart enough to grasp or articulate it then, but somehow I knew.  I always knew what was expected.  And I also knew that I probably worried my parents with my own inexplicable to them actions and decisions.  I chose my own path and it wasn't the obvious dutiful daughter one they wanted.  But the lessons stuck, and I guess it all worked out.  I'm proud of them and they are proud of me.  Prost Pop!

Father's Day Postcard - FIL

Holyoke Cotton Rag Paper in Bone 280# with painted edge (by me) - ah yeah, cuz that's some of what I do at my paying gig.  I get to learn how to airbrush this coming week, yeahs!  Anywhoo.  I am making a father's day postcard at my job (in any spare time of course) for my Pop.  After what P, T and R did last night - I got the idea for my FIL's father's day card.  I married into one kind and impressive family.  Paul is funny and fearless and confident.  He and R wore their FOE tshirts to Rotofugi for the Josh Herbolsheimer and Martin Ontiveros opening.  So cute and cool.  We LOVE Rotofugi and found them while visiting my in-laws in Chicago.  Our first purchases:  Dehara blind boxes, around 2004. We also love Josh and Martin's artwork and have been lucky enough to work with them through FOE.  So, P and R in their FOE tshirts show up at the opening and R (6 years old) says he works for FOE drawing monsters.  Cute and dorky and sweet and sincere.  I am a lucky girl.  Oh, so, free hand cut letters, glued, laminated.  It's kind of a perfect card for my FIL.

that's when I reach for my revolver

that's when it all gets blown away.

Bday card for my B-I-L. He's gonna let me shoot a gun. I can't wait.

Cut paper on cardboard, scraps from letterpress job. I like cutting and glueing. What? I LIKE it. Gotta start somewhere. Pssh. I'm no Andrea Kang, but I do have access to paper, scissors, glue, so we'll see how it goes.

my cruddy coloring, FOR CHARITY!

This week my boss played Molly Hatchett at work. I said, I think I made out with some boy in his Monte Carlo to this, back in H.S. (I probably didn't, but it coulda happened).

And I also colored a picture for charity and wrote Blue Oyster Cult lyrics in the sky.

It's taken 30 years to turn some isolating h.s. memories into semi-fond ones. Shit man, anything can happen.